A sermon based on II Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17

6 So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— 7for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please God. 10For all of us must appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.

14For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. 15And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. 17So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!


A couple of summers ago, I was in my office when I received an e-mail. It was an angry e-mail, so blistering that instead of cheerfully dinging at me when it arrived, my e-mail program probably should have growled. (That would be a nice feature, wouldn’t it? Give a person some warning.)

“I cannot believe what our General Assembly has done!” the message began, and proceeded to outline a series of perceived missteps and blunders on the part of the commissioners. I felt the disgust searing a hole through my screen. I felt the hurt and betrayal this person felt as a lifelong Presbyterian.

The subject line was something like, “Argh!!!”

I was still pondering this e-mail two hours later when my computer dinged! again. I clicked on my mail program with a rather tentative finger. This time I was treated to a chorus of hallelujahs at the courageous stand that our denomination had apparently taken on an important issue.

The subject line this time: “Presbyterians ROCK!”

Wow. What’s a pastor to do?
We’re stuck between a ROCK! and an ARGH! place!

And the church is at it again this week with our 217th General Assembly in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m sure Senior Pastor will have many tales to tell when she returns, but with five days still to go I can already predict one thing with absolute certainty. In the days and weeks to come, as the decisions of the GA start to get publicized, I will receive some e-mails that are disgusted and some that are elated.

What’s the Presbyterian Church (USA) to do? Deep disagreements have plagued us and will continue to do so in issues such as whether it’s appropriate to divest from companies in Israel who profit from the conflict there, or whether gay and lesbian persons may be ordained to ministry (a perennial favorite in most every mainline denomination). Those are the big two, but there are other issues to be discussed, debated and considered this year—everything from whether Christian educator should be an ordained office of the church to a statements on torture and immigration.

We are a church divided on these and other issues, and we are a church, like much of the mainline, that is hemorrhaging members by the thousands each year. Everyone has a different theory for why that is, and is it any surprise that these theories are usually based less on hard realities than on convenient assumptions that just happen to bolster up a person’s particular agenda?

Liberals blame the conservatives: they’re out of touch.
Conservatives blame the liberals: they’re watering down the gospel.
The moderates blame everybody: they won’t stop fighting!

What’s the church to do?

I’ve had the opportunity to attend three of the last five General Assemblies, and it is there that I have seen the Church (large C) at its best and at its worst.

It is at its best when people come together in humility, listening prayerfully, seeking out God’s will for the church.

It is at its best when the church commissions missionaries and young adult volunteers, as it does at each GA, to go into all the world and preach and share the gospel of Jesus. There were 200 commissioned this year alone.

Just this past weekend the GA commissioners were surprised and electrified to learn of a gift to the denomination for the purposes of giving presbyteries grants to start new churches, transform struggling ones and strengthen racial-ethnic congregations. The gift came from one man in the amount of $150 million. Imagine the possibilities for Christ’s church through such a resource!

It is on the denominational level that we respond to disasters and crises, here and around the world. I'm told that when Hurricane Katrina hit, that Presbyterian Disaster Assistance was one of the earliest responders with money and support.

And so when people ask me, “Why do we even have denominations?” I tell them—this is why. We are more effective together than apart. We can also do more and different things together than apart. Our congregation is supporting a home for AIDS orphans in Kenya, but as far as I can see is doing nothing in Latin America, where the need is also very great. For whatever reason, it’s just not ours to do, but that’s OK, because [A Different Presbyterian Church] goes to Merida, Mexico a few times a year. We do that work on behalf of, and in the name of, one another. The GA is one of the few places when we get a picture of the denomination in its rich diversity. “When we are at home, and when we are away,” at various places around the globe, our aim is the same—to please God (to use Paul’s words).

The Church is at its worst, however, when the commissioners get badgered, bullied and otherwise drowned out by special interest groups that are insistent on imposing their own point of view. It is at its worst when extreme elements de-Christianize one another.

I heard a few weeks ago about a moderator who presided over a denomination during a particularly contentious debate. He received countless e-mails during his term, including one e-mail that said, “I pray daily for your death because you are killing our church.”

To say that that is the Church at its worst is an understatement. I’m not even sure that’s “church” anymore.

We walk by faith and not by sight during these days.

Who knows what will become of the Church? The same people who have threatened to leave the denomination before are doing so again this year. Who knows what will happen?

What is God up to with us? What kind of a witness can a divided church possibly be in a divided culture—a culture of red states and blue states, Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken, Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilley, of Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers and “W” stickers? (Did you read the article in the Post last fall about how people were refusing to remove their bumper stickers from the presidential election? One man admitted to cutting in front of people with Kerry/Edwards stickers on their cars. Another woman admitted that she didn’t let people into her lane if they had a George Bush sticker on their car. The nastiness cut both ways.)

What is the church’s witness to that divided world when we are just as divided?

Last year, I was invited to attend a conference for young people (high school and college) considering ministry. I served as a small group leader for a group of 9 young women and also sat on a panel of “real live pastors” during a session of Q&A.

All week long I heard variations on the same question, the same concern on the minds of these young people: how as a minister does one balance the pastoral role with the need to be prophetic? How does one minister compassionately to a congregation while also being honest and forthright about the fact that the gospel makes radical claims on our lives, claims that will often put us at odds with the culture at large?

This is a question that every pastor struggles with. The purpose of the gospel is not to make us feel comfortable. On the other hand, the gospel is good news for a hurting people, and I remember the wise words of a seminary professor who said, “Never trust a prophet who enjoys the job.”

What I realized, however, is that underneath their very good question lurked a deeper question, which was, “How do I impart my point of view, which is The Truth, to the congregation so that they can Get It (and not run me out of town)?” I think they were secretly worried about selling out their ideals, their prickly, sharp-edged John the Baptist gospel that’s clothed in camel’s hair and that eats locusts and wild honey.

During the panel discussion, I talked to them about you all. I said that on pretty much any issue you can come up with, we have people on both sides of it. We argue, we disagree, but when cancer strikes, we respond. When homeless men need a meal or a sweater or a friend, we take action. When Jesus invites us to come to the table, we gather around it as one body. And when we come to the font and the elder asks us whether we promise to teach this child about Jesus Christ, we don’t ask questions, we say ‘Yes we do.’

And in this world when you can watch cable news channels or read websites or listen to talk radio that does nothing but reinforce your own point of view, when the proliferation of media is such that you can live in an echo chamber of your own making, a church that can come together and talk, pray, worship, and serve together in the midst of differences is a prophetic witness. And it’s a witness the world needs.

One of my continuing education activities is to meet every so often with a group of clergy that comes from all over the theological spectrum. We call ourselves Common Ground, somewhat optimistically, because sometimes it feels like we have anything but common ground. We argue, we cajole one another, we share stories of our ministry with one another, and we laugh (sometimes we can take ourselves so seriously in ministry!). And one of the keys to our success is that we don’t have a goal in mind. There’s no manifesto in process, just a conviction that we are the body of Christ for one another and for the world, united by our love for Jesus and our desire to serve him. It’s one of the hardest things to do, to continue to hang together whose goals and convictions often seem so different from our own.

In fact, we can’t do it. We really can’t.

Except that “The love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.” One has died for all—not just for some, not just for the people we agree with, the Republicans or the Democrats or the Presbyterians or the Baptists or whoever.

“One has died for all… therefore all have… died”! Amazing. You’d expect it to say “therefore all will live,” because following Jesus provides us with life abundant—but no, Paul says that all have died—died to our own egos and agendas, died to the illusion that we ourselves understand God’s truth perfectly. Only when we have died to these things can we regard one another not from a human point of view, but from God’s point of view. Only then can we be that new creation in Christ, where everything old has passed away, where everything has become new!

One of the pieces of business under consideration this week at GA is a report from the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the church. These are twenty people who are so diverse, they make my Common Ground group look like lockstep clones of one another. They met together for five years to try and develop a proposal for a way forward through the controversies that plague us, and when it came time to report to the church, they wrote a statement that all twenty of them accepted, unanimously.

I’d like to leave you with a concluding paragraph from that report:

On the night before he died, in the longest prayer recorded in the Gospels, Jesus prayed for us, the church of the future, lifting our names and our troubled church before God in prayer. And chief among his petitions in our behalf was his prayer that we “may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. . . . By this everyone will know that you are my disciples [he said], if you have love for one another” (John 17:21; John 13:35).

…Jesus does not, it should be noted, pray that we may all be the same or that we all agree. Nevertheless, even as we differ and even as we contend with one another, Jesus prays that we may all be one, that we might love one another despite many differences that threaten to divide us.

At a time when people readily kill one another over their differences, a church that lives and works for that kind of witness will capture the attention of a polarized world.

The love of Christ urges us on…
to be that new creation with one another.

May it be so—not only in our own congregation, or in the Presbyterian Church (USA), but in the church universal, the church of Jesus Christ.

Amen.